Wow. I just can't really believe that's it already been a full year since we walked out of our office for the last time but that's exactly how long it's been. A year ago yesterday we left work and dropped off big bags of work clothes at the donation box on our way home, knowing we didn't need to dress that way anymore because we were headed to the beach! :) We arrive here at the beautiful Gulf Coast of southern Alabama (Gulf Shores to be exact) a year ago today to start our FIRE adventures and haven't stopped since.
DH had just turned 52 and I had just turned 51 so we were, by no means, the kind of early retirees Mr. & Mrs. MM were but still, we were pleased to be leaving 15 or so years earlier than most anyone else expects to. Because DH retired from the Air Force 10 years earlier, we were set as far as health insurance goes so that was a huge component to us being able to leave as early as we did. I know so many people are so concerned about affording health insurance when they retire (before Medicare), I'm glad we didn't have to worry about that. We also have his AF pension each month and that's been what we're living on mostly.
One of the first things we did when we got here was to go pay off the mortgage on our condo. We had purchased it almost 5 years earlier and had been paying it down but still, it's great not having that payment to make each month, especially since it would have equaled over half our pension. I know a lot of people don't like the idea of paying off a mortgage when it's a cheap interest rate but we felt it was the right thing for us to do. We waited until the 5th anniversary of our closing on the condo and burned our mortgage on the beach on that day. It was awesome. :)
It honestly just felt like we were on vacation the first couple of weeks because that was all we had to compare it to - the freedom of waking up when you wanted, doing whatever you wanted all day long, not worrying about work. Although honestly, even on prior vacations we were always checking emails and touching base with work as though it couldn't wait, it couldn't go on without us. This time that was different, however I will say it honestly took us a couple months - maybe longer - to quit THINKING about work...to quit wondering how things were going...did someone remember they needed to do this or that, would anyoone know that this was coming up, etc. It definitey took some time to decompress. Now we have decompressed. I can't exactly pinpoint when it happened but if the subject of work ever comes up now, all we do is laugh and say "poor bastards." LOL.
We haven't traveled much at all other than a few day trips here and there. We live in paradise - why would we need to go anywhere else, right? :) I did go back to Oklahoma to visit in May, after we'd been gone 10 months. Mainly to see our son who is still in college there (I hadn't seen him since Christmas). It was weird to be back. I missed the beach from the moment I got there. The place that had been my home my whole life no longer felt like home. I'm not sure when I'll go back again.
We're helping some friends move to Tampa next week but that won't be traveling for fun. But we're going on a Tuesday and coming back on Thursday. That's the freedom of retirement.
I just finished my 70th book since we retired yesterday. I've been keeping up with them on
www.goodreads.com so that's how I know how many there have been. I am pretty sure I hadn't read 70 books in the last 25 years prior to retiring. There just wasn't time. Now I just download them from the library onto my iPad and away we go. I think I set a goal of reading 50 in a year but I didn't mind surpassing it. :)
We have volunteered for all kinds of community events - festivals, coastal clean up projects, etc. DH volunteers every week at the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola and gets to play with restoring old (WW II) airplanes. He just loves it. The average age for volunteers at the museum is 72 so he's just a pup compared to most of them. They can't get over how much he knows and how much he actually works. LOL. They've offered him a job several times but he just tells them thanks, but no thanks. We tried to volunteer at our wonderful Gulf Coast Zoo but they don't take volunteers. So instead, I'm now on the board of directors for the Zoo Foundation. It's pretty exciting as a new zoo is in the works and should be open sometime in 2018. Glad to be a part of that.
Back a couple months ago, I accidentally got a part time job that has been more work than I intended. LOL. We have this darling gift store here that I just love. I was there one day and just asked the manager if they ever hired anyone to only work when they really needed someone -- like someone called in sick or needed a day off for some reason. She asked if I meant like an "on-call" person and I said yes. She thought that was a great idea and gave me an application. I laughed and told her I really didn't want to work much - I was retired - but I'd love to help out if she needed. She hired me on the spot! I had to work a couple days a week (6-7 hours at a stretch) to get trained on the computer/register. It was a piece of cake and I was pretty much trained after the first couple of days. Then, the busy summer tourist season hit and she was looking at having to hire someone just temporarily to help cover it. I opened my big mouth and offered to help - so I've been working 3 or 4 days a week the last month. I finally told her as much as I love helping her out, that was just too much work so now I'm working only one day a week for the next month...then will not be on the schedule at all unless she really needs me. She said she doesn't want to risk losing me (I'm dependable, I can actually make change and am friendly to people - LOL) by working me too much. It's really been fun - I love the store, the people I work with are great and it truly isn't "work" compared to what I've done in the past (no real responsibilities, no pressure, etc). Plus, all the money I've made has gone into our play money -- we can do whatever we want without impacting our budget. Now we've got over $1,000 to play with and no idea what we're going to do with it. LOL. Oh, and the discounts I get for working there are ridiculous - 50% off all our t-shirts and food in the restaurant and then I get anything else in the store at cost. Then we get discounts from all kinds of other places, too - like 25% off boat rentals and parasailing. Pretty cool. I hate to quit completely and give up those discounts, even if we haven't used them much because we just don't buy much. I think once it cools off a little, those boat rentals will come in handy.
We've made lots of great friends, many of whom don't work. Most of them are older than us, of course. We've made other friends who own in our building but don't live here, they just come as often as they can. Since they still work, we don't see them all the time but it's nice when they do come. We entertain as often as we can and we love having people over in the middle of the week just because we can. Heck, we often forget what day it is anyway. LOL. We haven't had nearly as many visitors as I thought we would living at the beach but I think that may change as we have two different sets of friends planning to come in October.
We've played lots of tennis and golf in the last year (not so much during the heat of the summer) and we have the most amazing bike trails here. We take our bikes out and will ride 20+ miles along the awesome state park trails as often as we can.
We have learned that we LOVE having so much time to spend together. We are truly best friends and I just love that. On the rare days we are apart, we both miss each other.
As for the money, as I mentioned, our pension pays the biggest majority of our living expenses each month. We could probably keep the budget within our pension but we don't feel the need to live that tightly, as unmustachian as that may be. We started off with a $10,000 cushion and we still have about $6,000 of that left even after doing a few big projects on the condo when we first got here. We've watched the balance in our 401Ks climb, even after a big drop right after we retired and we're about to pass the $700K mark there. No telling what it will be by the time we're 59 1/2. We figure even if we pull some of it out before then and pay the penalty, in the great scheme of things it's no big deal really. We can't imagine what it would be like if we started pulling 4% a year out as that would pretty much double what we get now with the pension and there's no way we need that much. Then we're planning to take Social Security when we turn 62 so we're going to have more money than we'll now what to do with. I'm sure the grandkids will get spoiled. :)
After finding MMM we reallly did move our early retirement plans up by about 3 years from where they originally were. We decided that all we needed was enough and we thought we would have enough to retire when we did. And we were right. Sure, if we had worked another 3 years at our $100K (each) jobs, we would have ended up with a lot more money but if we didn't really need it, why do it? Why put ourselves through the stress and pressure we had every week when we could walk away from it and be FREE? I'm so glad we left when we did and didn't cave in to the "1 more year" syndrome that so many seem to struggle with. I know some people can't imagine walking away from $200K+ each year but we haven't had a single regret since leaving and we wake up every day feeling so blessed and so happy. That is worth more than anything.
Sorry for such a long post but I just wanted to share what our first year of freedom has been like and hopefully encourage someone else out there to take the leap - it is so worth it. :) There is nothing like waking up every day and doing whatever the hell you want to do. LOL. And a huge thank you to MMM for helping us do it even earlier than we thought we could.
The picture is our view every day. Ahhhhh. Paradise.
